Abrahamic Traditions in Contemporary Context: Dialogue, Conflict, and Ongoing Scholarship

The Abrahamic traditions are not museum pieces. They are living, contested, internally diverse movements that are actively negotiating their identities in relation to modernity, pluralism, and each other. A student who has learned the basics of their histories and texts is ready to engage the harder questions: the nature and limits of interreligious dialogue, the theological claims each tradition makes about the others, and the current state of scholarly debate on questions of historical origins and textual interpretation. By the end of this course you will be able to analyze the major models of interreligious dialogue and their theological presuppositions, engage with current scholarly debates about the origins and development of the Abrahamic traditions, compare how each tradition has responded internally to the challenges of modernity, and articulate your own framework for respectful, rigorous comparative religious engagement. What you will learn: - Models of interfaith dialogue: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism — their theological logics and critiques - Jewish-Christian relations since the Holocaust: Nostra Aetate, its reception, and subsequent developments in dialogue - Jewish-Muslim and Christian-Muslim dialogue: major initiatives, obstacles, and the role of shared and contested sacred sites - Historical and critical challenges to Abrahamic origins: the documentary hypothesis, the historical Jesus question, and critical Quran scholarship — what is at stake and how each tradition responds - Reform, orthodoxy, and fundamentalism: how each tradition has diversified internally in response to modernity and what that means for generalization about "what the tradition teaches" - Supersessionism and its alternatives: the theological claim that one covenant supersedes another, its critics, and what post-supersessionist theology looks like - Contemporary debates about religious law: halakha, canon law, and Sharia in secular democratic contexts - Framing ongoing study: key journals, primary text editions, and scholarly reference works for continuing in-depth comparative study The course is built around comparative readings of scholarly texts, argument analysis exercises, and extended reflective essays. You will engage with actual scholarly positions in the field, not just summaries, and produce your own analytical responses. This course is written for students who have completed foundational study of the Abrahamic traditions and want to engage contemporary scholarship and interfaith discourse. Suitable for students of religion, theology, history, and related fields. The approach throughout is scholarly, not devotional.